Whois & Analysis for longwarjournal.org

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a think tank based in Washington, D.C., focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Its political leanings have been described variously as either nonpartisan or neoconservative.

FDD holds events throughout the year, including its annual Washington Forum, briefings on Capitol Hill, expert roundtables for public officials, diplomats, and military officers, book releases, and panel discussions and debates within the policy community.

FDD's Long War Journal (LWJ) is an American news website, also described as a blog, which reports on the war on terror.

The site is operated by Public Multimedia Incorporated (PMI), a non-profit media organization established in 2007.

PMI is run by Paul Hanusz and Bill Roggio.

Roggio is the managing editor of the journal and Thomas Joscelyn is senior editor.

The site is a project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where both Roggio and Joscelyn are senior fellows.

Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa.

Mali is the eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of just over.

The population of Mali is 14.5 million.

Its capital is Bamako.

Mali consists of eight regions and its borders on the north reach deep into the middle of the Sahara Desert, while the country's southern part, where the majority of inhabitants live, features the Niger and Senegal rivers.

The country's economy centers on agriculture and fishing.

Some of Mali's prominent natural resources include gold, being the third largest producer of gold in the African continent, and salt.

About half the population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 (U.S) a day.

A majority of the population (90%) are Muslims.

Niger (or), officially the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River.

Niger is bordered by Libya to the northeast, Chad to the east, Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, and Algeria to the northwest.

Niger covers a land area of almost 1,270,000 km2, making it the largest country in West Africa, with over 80 percent of its land area covered by the Sahara Desert.

The country's predominantly Islamic population of about 19 million is mostly clustered in the far south and west of the country.

The capital city is Niamey, located in the far-southwest corner of Niger.

The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian Savanna (historically known as the Sudan region) to the south.

Having a semi-arid climate, it stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea.

The Arabic word literally means "shore, coast", while the word Sahara is derived from the Arabic word for desert.

Together, these names evoke an image of the Sahel's vegetation as a coastline on the Sahara's ocean of sand.